Phillips DALI Ballasts

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by kelly, May 27, 2010.

  1. kelly

    kelly

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    Hi I have a bit of a strange one here. I have had a fair bit of experience programming DALI Ballasts over the past few years mainly ATCO Tridonic and a couple of OSRAMS here and there. Recently I had to program some Phillips Ballasts and have noticed a couple of strange things.

    The client went to remove a tube from one fitting which resulted in all the fittings on the network going to 100% (previously 30%). A bit strange but what happened next was the worrying thing. The ballasts wouldnt react to any C Bus commands until we cycled 240V to the ballasts via CB.
    I didnt get any logs or anything and we programmed the ballasts using Config tool. It wasnt a good time for the client to have me fishing around looking for the problem at that stage. Any Ideas why this would of happened would be appreciated
     
    kelly, May 27, 2010
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  2. kelly

    ashleigh Moderator

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    *some* DALI Ballasts (not sure if Philips do this or not) don't actually store their settings until you do some kind of special operation on it. For some its things like flicking the lamp out and back in again, others (I think) its a quick power off/on cycle.

    Perhaps you were afflicted by this. Or perhaps something else.

    For a standard, the implementation by devices of the standard is somewhat non-standard :mad:
     
    ashleigh, May 27, 2010
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  3. kelly

    kelly

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    Thanks Ashleigh I actually heard back from Phillips today. Their advice was to make sure that you have no mains power at the ballasts when you change lamps. A bit unrealistic in some enviroments as most DALI setups Ive seen have a constant mains voltage at them. Im glad they gave me an answer so at least I know that its a known issue with Phillips ballasts and not a gremlin that will cause other issues.
    One thing to know with OSRAM Ballasts is after you address and group the ballast and set ramp rates etc you need to turn OFF the mains power while leaving the 15vDC DALI still connected. Apparently this is the only way that you can rely on the ballast keeping its memeory. This info came from OSRAM itself after I reprogammed a certain group of ballasts for the 3rd or 4th time.
    I dont have many issues with Atco Tridonic after a few early failures they settle down pretty well.
     
    kelly, May 28, 2010
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  4. kelly

    ashleigh Moderator

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    Heh. Interesting, they all seem to have their own peculiarities.

    I'd heard of the Osram issue. The Philips one is new to me. Talk about making an install difficult!
     
    ashleigh, May 28, 2010
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  5. kelly

    samluo

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    hi, we are manufacturer of dali ballasts and leds, when all lamps on bus turn to 100% and lose control, ballasts are in the status of "Bus failure", reason may be followings:
    1. bus power off
    2. some unit goes error to drop bus voltage down but not recover.
    when in bus failure status, you can check the voltage on bus will be much lower than 15V.
     
    samluo, Jun 8, 2010
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